Monday, September 30, 2013

When You Run Out of Ideas

What do you do when you run out of ideas?

Well, congratulate yourself. You are ready to pay attention to purpose of life.

And the purpose of life is to do be obedient to Allah (SWT).
To to everything according to Shariah.
To please Allah (SWT).

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Thank You, My Benefactor

There is a couplet by Dr Nawaz Deobandi:

Uska Kitna Bojh Utara, Dar Par Aakar Sa-il Ne
Aur Sakhi Ye Soch Raha Hai, Sa-il Par Ahsan Kiya

(
Uska = His
Kitna = How Much
Bojh = Burden
Utara= Relieved
Dar = Door
Par = At
Aakar = After Arriving
Sa-il = The One Who Asks ( For Money or Help)
Ne = By

Aur = And
Sakhi = Rich Person
Ye = This
Soch + Think
Raha Hai = Doing (Present Continuous)
Ahsan = Favour
Kiya = Done
)

The Pleader (beggar) Relived Him By Visiting
The Provider Thinks He Did a Favour

If a person comes for help then he is doing you a favour.
Never think that you are doing a favour by giving a rupee, or ten, or hundred or thousand.

After doing a little bit of Sadqa ( charity) above feeling visited yours truly in a rather acute manner.

The Muzaffarnagar Riots 2013

There were the post Babri Masjid demolition riots of 1992 that spilled over to the early 2013.

Then there was Gujrat 2002.

Now we have Muzaffarnagar 2013.

All of them massive riots in which massive loss of life and property has been sustained by the minority community in India.

India has a an elephant in its drawing room.

Now what is this elephant in the drawing room?

This is a metaphor for the irony associated with the so called modern civilized method to solve problem.

People say that you should solve your problems amicably, with diplomacy, with negotiations.

Metaphorically this might lead to you accommodating an elephant in your drawing room. Every one will know about its existence but no one will be willing to talk about it.

And we in India do have an elephant in our collective drawing room. It is the elephant of communal riots. The clashes between the majority an minority communities.

And many have since conclude that these euphemistic descriptions hide more than they reveal. These riots are in reality pogroms against a hapless minority.

No one is willing to talk about them in times of peace.
Perhaps the logic is to let the sleeping lions be.
Or let the sleeping monsters be. Who can argue against that?

And in troubled times there is more reason to do so.
Who would like to be on the radar of the law enforcing agencies by talking about such things in times of crisis?

And hence the elephant in the drawing room is left ignored at all times.

No one is willing to look at the trouble in the face.

Even if the problem grows from bad to worse over the time.

And just for the record what was worse this time?

For one the riots have reached villages.
Villages were the places where the old bonds of rural love had so far been effective against the venom f communal hatred.
No more.
The spread of the so called communal violence, actually the pogroms against the minority, has been very extensive this time.

Rumi in America

From YouTube :
"Rumi and Hafez have been the guiding light, Rumi especially, of American poetry for the last five or ten years. But also it seems to me that if we're ...criticizing the Muslim world so much, we should be able to give thanks for the genius that is there...So, this is Persian poetry-14th century.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Amir Khusro of India

Several years ago yours truly got interested in Amir Khusro.
That is a big name in the history of letters in India.
A man who used several languages with ease.
Avadhi, Brij Bhasha, Persian.
Wrote a book each in the style of all the great poets of Persian language before his times.
So much so that his contemporary poet from Persia, Hafiz of Shiraz, became jealous and wrote:

Shakar Shikah Shawand
Humein Tootiyaan-e-Hind
Zeen Qand-e-Parsi Ba
Bangala Mi Rawad

After this Persian sweet
Reaches Bengal (India)
All the parrots will
Start talking sweet

Khusro might not be superior to any one of those greats of Persia in their respective fields but combining his works together one comes to the unmistakable conclusion that he bested them all.

That is no mean achievement.

But then, according to Ram Dhari Singh Dinkar, is single handedly responsible for the birth of two languages- Hindi and Urdu.

So yours truly was mesmerized by Khusro and wanted to build a web page on him.

This was never to be.

Another Alig already had a web page on Khusro and had done the job rather thoroughly.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The So Called Hyderabad Police Action of 1948

The Hyderabad state in South India was merged with India in the so called  1948 Hyderabad police action.

Even this piece of information is precious nugget for you do not read about it in Indian text books.

Now the truth about this is out.

According to BBC it was in reality a military action in which hapless people of minority were left at exposed to the marauding majority gangs. Military even persuaded the majority to commit atrocities and did so itself too.

The prime minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, worried about his image, set up  the Pandit Sunderlal committee to investigate the reports of violence against minorities. Its report was never published.

Now is now open for viewing at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi.

Historian Sunil Purushotham from the University of Cambridge reports that Sunderlal committee estimated the deaths upto forty thousand.

And that will merely be the official casualty figure.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Imam Ghazali (RA) and Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (RA)

Imam Ghazali (RA) and Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (RA) are two big names in the cultural, theological, intellectual and spiritual history of Islam. Recently the latest round of going through the first volume f the Urdu version of the Savior's of Islamic Spirit (Tareekh-e-Dawat-o-Azeemat) by Ali Miyan (RA) gave yours truly some perspective on their status. Yours truly feels that Shaikh Jilani (RA) begins where Imam Ghazali (RA) ends. Imam Ghazali (RA) reached intellectual heights in Abbasid Baghdad such that no higher honour was available. Then the spiritual turmoil ensued in his life and he spent traumatic years in spiritual quagmire. Finally the fog disappeared and he again took up his earlier assignments of teaching but the approach now was spiritual rather then mere intellectual. And then he took retirement from Nizamiya College and got settled at his native Tus. The sundry writings from this period are exquisite pieces of spiritual art work. And we are talking about the person who already has works like Incoherence of Philosophers, Ihya Uloom-id-Deen and Alchemy of Felicity behind him. And yet Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (RA) is on a different plane altogether. Every single discourse in Futuh-al-Ghaib looks like Imam Ghazali (RA)'s writings in the post retirement period. And the same can be said about other writings by the Shaikh (RA).

Both of these Masha-ikh reached these heights by extreme hard work and life long striving. We Muslims remain indebted to them for their sacrifices as well well the light of Shariah perfected by them for us.

Bina Kardand Khush Rasme Ba Khaq-o-Khoon Ghaltidan
Khuda Rahmat Kunad Ein Aashiqan-e-Pakteenat Ra

They established the beauteous traditions by their work and toil
May Allah (SWT) shower His blessings on these pious people.

Sunni Forum Affairs

(1) Sunni Forum was down for weeks.

(2) It is now up.

(3) Its character is drastically changed.

(4) So far it has been a discussion forum with massive participation.

(5) The total number of registered users exceeds fifty thousand.

(6) The number of active users has been more than two thousand for last few years.

(7) At a given time several hundred users would be on line.

(8) Every month there will be a time when number of users on line would cross one thousand.

(9) According to Maulana Hamood Aleem the new push of the forum will be to strive to become a comprehensive web portal for authentic Islamic knowledge.

(10) As a result the forum activity has nearly come to a stand still. Yours truly misses that. But yours truly goes with the decision of the Shura power meeting.

(11) Yours truly is feeling a sense of release because no more one has to deal with a variety of  people trying define Islam at their own terms.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Representation of Emotions

Iqbal Ashar is a an Urdu poet from Delhi.

Urdu is a weakness of yours truly. So is Delhi.

And when a combination of them one can imagine the effectiveness of it.

Here one ghazal by him.